If You’re Tuning In…

…to see what we thought of tonight’s debate, so am I. I had to work tonight and couldn’t watch it, but I think Scott and/or Paul did, and I’m waiting with bated breath to see what they thought. In the meantime, my wife did see it and thought McCain did great.

McCain is unusual for a politician of his experience in that his performances vary widely. Sometimes he is “on,” and sometimes he isn’t. In the first debate, hard on the heels of the breaking financial crisis, he clearly wasn’t. In the second, he was getting warmed up. Whether he did enough tonight to change the momentum of the campaign remains to be seen, but he apparently was at or near his best for the first time in this year’s debates.

UPDATE: Returns are coming in on the online polls. At the Drudge Report, readers think that McCain “won” by a three to one margin.

That isn’t too surprising. More surprising is that at left-leaning AOL, readers say McCain won by a 48%-47% margin.